Remembering Love 4

SWAMIJI said, "ket, i want to do a production called 'odissi odyssey', so that geetha can choreograph and teach our senior dancers this beautiful dance form. and then, i want you to write a script on the story of emperor ashoka. before he became a buddhist king, he waged war on kalinga, the area that is now known as orissa. i see a connection..."

imagine my delight: to write a script for an entire production. i jumped into it with excitement and fervour. swamiji's idea was to bring the elements of ashoka's personal and political struggles onto the stage, culminating in a devastating loss of peace, especially after he had won the war. "victory! this is not victory," swamiji quoted to me, "but ugly defeat masquerading as victory!" emotionally and psychologically, ashoka would suffer desolation and inner darkness. until the grace of buddha came upon him.

with geetha, i wrote an odissi dance programme based on the rites of spring, how with the heavenly surya riding his horses northwards symbolised the coming of spring: a new beginning, a new illumination upon the world.

it was an exciting time for everyone at the temple of fine arts. because finally, there came in the person of geetha someone who could teach them odissi. odissi odyssey was a brilliant and colourful production, though the dramatic structure and final production of ashoka lacked flow and cohesion. nevertheless, it was a wonderful opportunity to create, to choreograph, to perform, and to watch it all unfold on stage. "ket, i want you to play emperor ashoka!"

in january 1994, immediately after our second run of ramayana in kuala lumpur, played to full houses, swamiji took us to orissa! geetha, shankar, hari and i, plus rupa damodaran, flew to calcutta with unbelievable excitement. i had been to india before many, many years ago but this would be the first time we would go with swamiji.

he had arranged everything. from calcutta, we flew to bhubaneswar. brown and red earth everywhere but also fresh green fields in the morning, undisturbed country. it was on one of the rides through the countryside that i thought i could live my life in india.

swamiji took us to a small town where we could buy all the costume jewellery for the production of both odissi odyssey and emperor ashoka. swamiji almost bought the whole shop! and the shopkeeper was of course very, very pleased.

later on, we visited the great doyenne of odissi, sanjukta panigrahi, and pandit raghunath panigrahi himself - the man with the voice of heavenly devotion. sanjuktaji then took us to pay our respects to the great kelucharan mohapatra. could this be true? that i had only read of such people, looked at their pictures in books, and now we were in their homes, eating a meal with them, sitting next to them, speaking to them. most of the time, my head was in a whirl, what with hari still a little toddler. and we were zooming here and there with swamiji. with visits to temples and holy places - all in a flash.

one morning swamiji took us to puri jagannath. the most famous temple of them all. where the gitagovinda is sung daily during worship, where the dance odissi became more beautiful, and had acquired an aura of sublime grace by being performed here for the deity.

at the door to the temple, we were stopped. swamiji was told that they could not allow me in! since i did not look like a hindu, and was definitely not indian. "hey, this man here was born in malaysia, not indian, but he is my devotee, he recites the trishati with me. he is mine. he belongs to me, so he has to come in with me," swamiji countered. "ah, you say, swamiji he is hindu, what is his gotra, his lineage?"

"he belongs to the gotra of viswamitra, and his name is sharan!"

my ears caught this last revelation. it was a gift. in front of the temple of puri jagannath, swamiji called me "sharan". i held it in my mind, kept it in my heart with feelings of having been given a treasure! "sharan" - surrender. did i not come to him to do exactly that?

"no, swamiji, this cannot be. he is not of our caste, and so he cannot come in. but you must come in, swamiji!" the man said. "if you won't allow him in, then i am not coming in. we are not coming into your temple," swamiji said quietly. "no, no, swamiji, you must come in and come to the sannidhanam. leave him out here, he will be alright. the others with you can come. swamiji, please, please, please do come in... i will ask them to do archana for you, come, come..."

"come, let's go, ket. i don't know what curses are on jagannath to have people like this run his temple. we don't have to go in," swamiji said to us, and began to walk away from the temple. i felt bad. did i spoil things? it was amusing to encounter this kind of situation. i did not mind going anywhere or not going anywhere. i was already with swamiji. and watching him show me all these differences in life... in any place.

to cheer us up, swamiji put us all in a rickshaw and we went for a ride up and down the street - and he told us how during the grand festival of the puri jagannath temple, the place would be jam packed with people - a sea of humanity - the temple car of jagannath would be pulled by thousands of devotees in a procession. and all the time, he would address his explanations of things to me.

when the rickshaw came to a stop, the man from the temple came running with prasadam from the pooja and offered it to swamiji, possibly expecting some gift of money. swamiji just took it from his hand and offered it to us. "no, i am not coming in. it is alright," he told the man.

i felt swamiji watching me, observing me and my responses to the different circumstances, to the strange behaviour of discrimination. was there a lesson there in it for me? i did not see it. it did not bother me.

"tomorrow, we will go to konarak," swamiji said. and all of us whooped with delight. especially geetha. shankar was of course pleased as pie. this was a treat we had dreamed of... every one of us who had ever danced odissi.

this is how i remember his love. my swamiji who loves me.

Remembering Love 3

"my heart aches... and a drowsy numbness pains my senses..."

would i ever have imagined that i would feel the way keats wrote: "as though of hemlock i had drunk..."?

the heart is increasingly burdened by swamiji's absence. his absence in my life. so i try to remember the good things, the amazing things...

sometime in 1993, young hari caught a cold, and a slight fever came upon him. but it would not be shaken off even after a week. he was teething, perhaps. but then, his left eye began to swell. he was given antibiotics but it didn't help. then uma called to say that it had struck her that morning something was not right. we should take him to the hospital.

my child had been crying in discomfort, especially at night. my darling boy who clung to me - and neither geetha nor i knew what was happening. the only comfort he could find was in watching prakash play hanuman in our ramayana. that beautiful scene seemed to take his mind off his fever and his pain.

when we showed him to the eye specialist, dr sukumaran, it was decided that hari would be admitted and put under observation and medication. my poor boy clung to me with fear, and i couldn't bear to leave him alone in the hospital. both geetha and i watched him day and night, and the antibiotics seemed to work. but on the third day, dr sukumaran came in on his routine check and found that the swelling inflamation did not abate completely. he ordered a scan. hari had to be drugged, and i had to watch my little boy struggle with the pricking of the needle and then going under.

geetha and i waited anxiously outside the scanning room. when the doctor came out, he said that he would have to book the operation theatre for wednesday, the very next day, and call in the e.n.t. and the brain surgeon. i slipped into the control room and gazed at the computer screens that showed hari's head. it was quite obvious. there was something that was pushing out from behind his left eye!.

was i in a scene that i had often seen in movies when parents learn of the terrible truth? fear and numbness gripped my insides. i was filled with helplessness. the technician who did the scan then said that she would do the scanning again, just to be sure. and as hari was coming out of the stupor, he had to be given another dose.

the second scan showed the same thing.

my little boy clung to me as geetha watched helplessly. my poor child filled with fear and me not knowing what to do for him. in the late evening, the brain surgeon came to hari's bed, and introduced himself to us. he said that he had not seen the scans yet but before he did he would prime us on the challenges that lay ahead of us if he had to perform surgery! he said that when an operation had to be done so close to the eye and the brain, there were many risks of damage. i listened in amazement to this man who droned on and on. i realise now that he wanted me to be certain that he should not be blamed afterwards for any negative consequences of the operation. my mind and my heart was racked, and i was almost breathless.

he then took out the scans from the envelope, took one look, and announced that his presence was not necessary!!! my relief was flushed with anger; why didn't he look at the scans first, instead of giving us such a terrible scare?

but still, hari had to be operated upon. i sent out word to swamiji about hari's condition, and i was told that everyone was already praying for hari.

the next morning, chandra came to the hospital with vibhuti and a black kasi string for hari. from swamiji. he tied the string on hari's wrist and told me that swamiji said everything would be alright. i told geetha that i wanted to go home for a short while, bring some things from the house, get a shower... just a short break.

i wanted to go home and in the quiet of the house, rail and scream at shivananda in the pooja room. but when i got there, all i could do was kneel in front of him and said, with pain and tears, that i accepted all that he was giving me - the torture of seeing my child suffer like that.

two weeks earlier, during a short discussion with swamiji in tfa, i had noticed that swamiji was staring at hari with great interest. he was having his coffee and watching hari scamper about among us. hari was barely two years old. i noticed that swamiji was glaring at hari in a curious way. it was as if he saw something that we couldn't. then swamiji called hari, and strangely, gave him some of the coffee he was drinking. hari lapped it up. i was sure that swamiji was blessing him in some way. all of us in that room were sure that it was so. but i could understand this only much later. after hari's ordeal in the hospital.

dr sukumaran told us that he did not need the brain surgeon but would require the presence of the e.n.t. specialist. hari was prepared for the operation theatre, and geetha and i sat. and waited. it seemed that our lives were hanging in the balance. our little boy, so sweet and cute and loving, to go through something like this at such a young age. one part of me knew that things would turn out well... yet another part of me had never experienced something like this before. three hours. of eternity.

a nurse came out and called out hari's name. geetha and i jumped up but were told that only one of us could go in. geetha nodded to me, and so i went in. my little boy had a white bandage over his eye and he was still groggy from the drugging. he was calling out to me in a gruff voice and i quickly held him close. so close. i was given back my child. already his face had lightened. the pain had gone. "papa's here, hari, papa's here..." he grabbed me close and clung tightly to me. dr sukumaran remarked that for someone so small there was a lot of stuff to be drained from the sac that had collected behind his left eye. i am sure i was thoroughly relieved but yet, now i only remember the pain.

leaving the hospital, with hari well on the road to recovery, geetha and i were happy to be home. but something else awaited me at work. the manager empathised with me over my son's ordeal at the hospital but nevertheless told me that they couldn't keep me anymore as business was not good. i was shocked but then, a voice in me said "shivananda wants you to change your lifestyle". i smiled at them and went home. made a call to an ex-boss, got a new position as consultant in her firm, and realised that when a door closes, a window opens.

i called swamiji in madras and told him of the state of affairs. he said, "ket, don't work for people who don't want you!" i told him i had already found another position.

two weeks later, in annalakshmi, para told me that hari's ordeal was his own sacrifice for me! that if not for my son taking on some of my karma, i would have lost an arm or a leg. i knew that this revelation had come from swamiji himself. it was then that i remember swamiji's talk to me about how the masters deal with karma for those who surrender to them, how in a group of devotees, people who love each other, through someone kind and compassionate could lighten the karmic burden of one individual among them.

could it be that this child of mine has such a loving soul that he would go through pain and torture for me? god knows that i was almost mad with the pain in my heart and my head watching him suffer.

then i remembered swamiji giving hari a sip of his coffee weeks earlier. then it struck me that he had seen what was to come to this little boy, and perhaps, for his bravery, for his deep love for his own father, swamiji blessed him, gave him strength, gave him the boost to withstand the onslaught of a father's karma.


then i began to understand a little of swamiji's deeply profound and mystical influence on our lives.

i bow my head in gratitude and humility.

this is how i remember his love. my swamiji who loves me.

Remembering Love 2

"hello, ket, this is swamiji speaking. are you free to talk?" his voice was easy and slow, and it took me straight away from the frenetic office environment i was in. "yes, swamiji.." my blood was rushing. it was an exciting occurence. earlier, bavani had called me earlier to invite me to play the sage viswamitra in the singapore performance of the ramayana. she had assured me that everything would be taken care of. i would only need to take leave from work.

"ket, i want you to come to singapore. you and geetha and hari. you will stay with me, and i have spoken to the journalists in singapore about you. they are waiting to interview you." i was curious. did i need this? did i send out any signals about wanting any publicity for myself?

i had been bowled over by the whole experience of the ramayana that swamiji created in november 1992. for the first time in my life, i could experience something mystical - the role of the sage viswamitra in his relationship with rama and lakshmana. moreover, right now, it seemed to me that swamiji was going all out to bring me and geetha to singapore to reprise the role, and get geetha to rehearse the dancers there for the janaka's court scene of odissi dancers which she had choreographed. so why would i need a bait like this?

"yes, swamiji, bavani had spoken to me, swamiji. and i will come," i quickly offered. and not without excitement. "you will be staying with me, ket. i will take care of you and geetha," he said simply, but already i felt something tremendous was to happen. what was it? i became even more curious.

in singapore, the show went on with much colour and excitement for all of us. the tremendous experience i had expected did not happen. the morning before we left for kuala lumpur, we went to a bookshop and bought some nice books. one of these was autobiography of a yogi by yogananda. earlier i had not had the desire to read it but this time the book was beckoning from the shelf.

back in kuala lumpur, i began to flip through the books we bought and decided that when both geetha and hari had gone to bed i would start reading. one night, past midnight, i casually opened the autobiography of a yogi... within its pages came forth thoughts, ideas and explanations of the beautiful, mysterious and mystical life of a seeker... and i began to understand who swamiji was... and seeing it clearer, it dawned on me with increasing excitement and joy that there was hope for me. each night i would devour pages of this book with overflowing happiness and gratitude with the knowledge that it was possible for me to experience the love of a guru. he had come to me in the form of swamiji.

i knew then this was the tremendous experience he wanted to give me.

this book spoke of the otherworldly relationship of the guru sishya manifest in this mundane world. how a life of deeper spirituality of the seeker is only possible with the loving guidance of a guru. the key word here is "loving". for compared to all relationships, none can come close to this special relationship of the sishya and his guru. this love for another that springs from an ocean of all embracing compassion... these words are not sufficient...

it dawned on me that my search - for what i had not known - had finally brought me to the feet of someone whose love for all who came to him cannot be measured. did my heart tremble with joy? yes! an understanding, an awareness, a sort of seeing experience i had never felt before, never imagined before, came upon me.

i had come to where i had wanted to be. i had reached the destination from where my journey would begin... he had held out his hand to me... and taken mine.

this is how i remember his love. my swamiji who loves me.